My first post, so be gentle – I am so-so literate about computers but will get lost in more heavy details. Using the search option, I have poured over the forum for the past 24 hrs trying to get pointers to help me create a back up drive for my CD music collection which I want to save as FLAC files…and well, I am getting confused so let me just ask for help. Here is my situation:

I have an 8 yr old Dell Laptop – Inspiron 8200- with a 60GB HD. 46BG are used. USB 1 (I guess USB 2 did not exist back then).

GOAL: I have 300 or more CD’s and would like to burn those directly onto an external HD - not rip an album to my Laptops HD, then export to the External HD - that should take more than twice the amount of time needed since I would constantly have to delete the FLAC album files from my puny laptop HD. I will probably store them in single album folders to make it easy to move specific content to a PMP. I am not tied to that idea though.

PURPOSE: To be able to pull the FLAC files from the external HD directly onto a Portable Music Player and album at a time or individual songs from different albums. Currently, I have a 2GB Samsung P5 (can only hold 20 or so FLAC files at a time, the sound is really nice, believe it or not) but will be getting (probably) the Corwon S9 32 GB before long.

I will get a new Laptop later this year with a 500 GB HD, but would like to get started storing my music now, perhaps then I can use the external HD as a simple back up for the FLAC files, importing maybe half of the music on the new computer.My girlfriend bought me a 320 GB Western Digital Passport Essential. I am returning it after having trouble disabling the infernal ‘WD Sync’ – even following instructions on the WD website, I continue to loose data…and/or now when I send albums to it, they apparently go there…but disappear. If I try again, I can’t use the same Artist-Album convention as it says the file already exist…but I can’t find it. One great big headache. The ‘Sync’ idea is not for me, I just want an external storage place. BTW I am using the free Express Rip from NCH software for this...works great when I rip straight from CD to my laptops HD.

SUGGESTIONS?Does anyone have an idea of how I can better go about this or does this look like a reasonable plan? Can anyone recommend a 500 GB (that should be enough, but 1T is affordable) external HD that would be ideal for this? I am really soured on the WD at the moment. I've been eyeing either a Seagate Freeagent Go or an Iomega eGo - PC World Mag 02/2010 gives the mac version their top honor for Top Portable Hard Drives. Just started searching so neither may be what I need.

I have seen a lot of people here willing to share their experiences so I am hoping some of you will continue to do this - even if you have not had the issues I am beset with but just have some good advice to share. It will be appreciated.

I'm going to put forth an idea that is going to sound crazy on the surface. Instead of buying a ready-made external USB hard drive I suggest you buy a regular internal hard drive & then pair it with a good external USB hard drive enclosure of your choosing.

Doing it this way you are going to get a hard drive that generally speaking will have a better warranty. Internal hard drives usually comes with 3 or 5 year warranty. External hard drive enclosures usually only come with a one year warranty. The other benefit to doing it this way is that after-market hard drive enclosures usually have much better ventilation than the enclosures used by hard drive manufacturers & that will help prolong the life of the drive.

If you're handy with a screw driver then you can handle it even with your 'so-so' computer knowledge.

I'm going to put forth an idea that is going to sound crazy on the surface. Instead of buying a ready-made external USB hard drive I suggest you buy a regular internal hard drive & then pair it with a good external USB hard drive enclosure of your choosing.

You could also get a hard drive dock, which is like an enclosure without the enclosure part. That way you don't have to worry about air circulation, and you can swap drives in seconds without any tools.